BACK TO THE FUTURE

The book Future Shock by Alvin Toffler proposed that mankind was psychologically and emotionally unable to adjust to rapid change; that change, to be comfortable, must happen over an extended time. 

Boy was he wrong. 

Change did come slow when knowledge was acquired by trial-and-error. 

At the time of Jesus, the wheelbarrow was cutting edge technology.   The world prodded along for centuries until the invention of the printing press in the 1400’s.   The printing press allowed the mass sharing of information including the technology of the day.

By the early 1900’s the T-model Ford and primitive airplanes were cutting edge technology.   Changes were happening, but they were still slow.   

In 1976’ computers were in their infancy and the Apple-2 with 4 Kb of ram, 5 ½ inch floppy disk and a monochrome monitor that wrote in upper case only was available for home computing for around a thousand dollars. 

Now in only forty years we have gone to hand held gigabyte computer phones with hundreds of apps available.   My GPS has the address, maps and driving directions for everyone living in the United States and Canada.  NASA has probes hurling into deep space and the internet has connected almost every person on earth.

This is only the beginning.  Computers are changing our world at such a pace that it is hard to keep up with new innovations.   We are on the cusp of artificial Intelligence (AI) where computers will learn and think for themselves.   It is almost unimaginable where technology will have taken us by the turn of the 22^nd  century.  

The book is outmoded 

But still a good read

If only to see 

Where we have come from.

the Ol'Buzzard

A DYSTOPIC IMAGE OF THE FUTURE

Our town has sidewalks and tree lined streets.  A couple of days ago I was driving through town and saw a man and his wife walking toward the college and behind them were two small boys that looked about eight and ten years old.   Both of these boys had a cellphone out and were totally absorbed in whatever was on their individual phones.   This left me wondering what these boys will be like as grownups. If they are so enmeshed with technology at their age, what sort of social change will technology have brought about fifty or seventy-five years from now?  

Now I know I am out of touch – I am supposed to be out of touch: I am old and of a different generation. 

Historically, when old men yell at clouds it is because they have seen it all before; except with a different cast of characters.  

But, this time it is different.   I am still a repository of cultural change; but change has never happened at this speed before.  

I lived through a time when AM radio and newspapers were the standard for communication; where passenger aircraft flew at 125 miles per hour; where telephones had a real person answer instead of a dial tone.   I have lived through and witnessed changes, but these changes came along at a comfortable rate.  

There has been more technological and cultural change in the last sixteen years that there was in the prior sixty years of my life.  

Those two boys should have been pushing and shoving and grabassing instead of walking like two zombies controlled by an electronic media.   What will their generation be like after a youth void of human interaction and after a childhood void of imagination and wonder?   I am sure they will fit into their future; but I can’t help but wonder what kind of alien future they will exist in.

 Change has come at a remarkable speed.   Technology has replaced personage and redefined human interaction. 

If you are a young person, fasten your seatbelt - because the world of tomorrow is going to look nothing like the world of today. 

the Ol'Buzzard